National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)

National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)

Commentary

By Donald Cohen and Peter Dreier. Posted on Huffington Post. January 5, 2011.

Newly emboldened as chair of the House’s key investigative committee, California Cong. Darrell Issa, the conservative Republican, sent letters to more than 150 business lobby groups, asking them to identify government rules that they want eliminated.

Issa wants to hand the government over to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a who’s who of corporate America. The new Republican Congress is their opportunity to get rid of those pesky environmental laws, consumer product safety laws and even rules to prevent another Wall St. financial train wreck.

With stalled clean energy legislation in DC, opponents of environmental protection have shifted their focus away from pro-active legislation toward dismantling existing environmental protection laws. Against the Supreme Court’s mandate, industry-funded politicians and the lobbyists that support them (e.g. National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)) are trying to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from doing its job: requiring polluters to reduce global warming pollution. Predictably, they are making the same argument they’ve always made—one that’s never come true: “Protecting the environment will destroy jobs; it will be impossible for firms to meet any new requirements and stay in business at the same time."

Cry Wolf Quotes

The effects include serious long-term losses in domestic output and employment, heavy cost burdens on manufacturing industries, and a resultant gradual contraction of the entire industrial base. The irony of this bleak scenario is that these economic hardships are borne with no real assurance they would be balanced by a cleaner, healthier environment.

…we cannot consider this bill in a vacuum. Industry today is facing a number of bills here on the Hill, all of which are of the same sort, and we have a right to look at them as a whole; because none of them is going to be destructive of industry in itself, but, taken as a whole, they are going to impose a very serious burden on the industries of the United States, which are now trying to come out of the depression.

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John C. Gall, Associate Counsel National Association of Manufacturers, Testimony, House Committee on Ways and Means.

S. 1795 could extend the authority of government into a takeover of the functions of the marketplace. What the American public wants to buy, and at what price, would no longer be the guideline for American business. Instead, the manufacturer and the businessman would have to look first to Washington, rather than to the consumer.

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Speech of Richard Kautz, Chairman of NAM, Wichita Luncheon, Papers of the National Association of Manufacturers.